Gingrich: Conservatives Will Have to Accept Marriage Equality

Newt Gingrich said that conservatives will have to accept marriage equality after three more states this year voted to allow same sex marriage and more will likely do the same in the 2014 election.

The former Speaker of the House said he didn’t expect gay rights to become the “wave” issue it has, but that he can accept the difference between a marriage in a church and a legal document, reported Huffington Post.

Gingrich said the GOP will need to accept that same sex marriage “is in every family, it is in every community,” and that Americans in increasing numbers find no issue with allowing it — as proven by voters on election day.

"The momentum is clearly now in the direction in finding some way to... accommodate and deal with reality,” he said. “And the reality is going to be that in a number of American states — and it will be more after 2014 — gay relationships will be legal, period.”

Looking around his own life, Gingrich has gay friends who have gotten married and his half-sister works at the gay-rights-supporting Human Rights Watch, he said the concern is that the Republican Party will get trapped behind the times.

"I didn't think that was inevitable 10 or 15 years ago, when we passed the Defense of Marriage Act," he said. "It didn't seem at the time to be anything like as big a wave of change as we are now seeing."